[CTC] House Democrats challenge Trump to 'prove it' on NAFTA

[Arthur Stamoulis]

POLITICO
House Democrats challenge Trump to 'prove it' on NAFTA

By Doug Palmer <https://www.politicopro.com/staff/doug-palmer>
05/18/2017 05:26 PM EDT

House Democrats who take credit for killing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement said Thursday that President Donald Trump will have to make big changes to NAFTA to win their support for a revised pact, which potentially could go to Congress for a vote next year. 

“Donald Trump ran for president as the best negotiator on the face of the Earth,” Rep. Dan Kildee <https://cd.politicopro.com/member/198805>, a Michigan Democrat whose district includes the hard-hit city of Flint, said at press conference with other critics of U.S. trade agreements. “Here’s his chance to prove it — to have his first moment of success as president of the United States.” 

The blunt message came after the Trump administration formally gave Congress 90 days' notice of its intention to renegotiate NAFTA. That came in a letter that many Democrats complained was short on details about how the White House intends to reshape the 23-year-old pact.

A deal with Canada and Mexico by the end of the year would be a heavy lift, but could set the stage for a vote in Congress just as lawmakers are gearing up for the November 2018 election — unless Republican leaders decide to put it off.

However, the White House could have built-in advantage when it comes to a vote since lawmakers would essentially be making a choice between keeping the old agreement or approving the revised pact.

Kildee and about a dozen other Democrats who formed the core of opposition to the TPP agreement said Thursday they feared Trump would make only modest changes to NAFTA after blasting it as an economic disaster throughout last year’s presidential campaign.

“We know why President Trump is president of the United States,” said Marcy Kaptur <https://cd.politicopro.com/member/51457> (D-Ohio), who voted against the original pact in 1993. “NAFTA is a brutal economic instrument and it pits the investment class against the industrial working class and small farmers. Those who have the most against those who don’t.”

Led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro <https://cd.politicopro.com/member/51351> (D-Conn.), House Democrats nearly prevented President Barack Obama from winning key “trade promotion authority” legislation in 2015 to complete the TPP agreement. Their position was strengthened when both Trump and Hillary Clinton came out against the pact during the 2016 campaign, and then Trump’s election sealed the pact’s fate.

“NAFTA needs far more than just tweaking,” DeLauro said, specifically calling for the removal of a controversial provision that allows companies to sue over government policy decisions that hurt their foreign investments. “If corporations are allowed to write the rules in the NAFTA renegotiation, the agreement could become even more damaging for our families.”

Other Democrats said the revised agreement should include rules against currency manipulation, stronger “Buy American” provisions and more restrictive “rules-of-origin” requiring more of a product to come from parts made in North America to qualify for duty reductions. 

“The Democrats defeated the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. [Trump] needs to take seriously the priorities of the working Americans who drove the election on trade," DeLauro said. "We will fight any NAFTA renegotiation that does not meet these goals."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi <https://cd.politicopro.com/member/51564> underscored that point and also called for progress in fighting climate change as part of a renegotiated pact.

“Democrats have spent years fighting to rework NAFTA and other trade agreements to put America’s working families first,” she said in a statement that criticized the NAFTA notification letter as too vague. “We will continue to press this administration for real action to create good-paying jobs and to strengthen America’s workers.” 

Top Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee also laid down their markers in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer that called on the administration to clarify its positions on currency manipulation, government procurement, investor-state dispute settlement and protections for workers and the environment. 

They also accused the White House of excluding Democrats from consultations that led to the letter sent today — another sign of the potential battle to come.

“It was clear from the start that the administration was only interested in working with the Congressional Republican leadership in drafting this notice,” Reps. Richard Neal <https://cd.politicopro.com/member/51543> and Bill Pascrell <https://cd.politicopro.com/member/51559> said. “But congressional Republican leadership has long opposed any changes to NAFTA, and now only reluctantly expresses a willingness to ‘improve’ and ‘modernize’ it. They in no way share your goal of ‘permanently reversing’ the trajectory of U.S. trade policy.”

Still, House Democrats insisted they were prepared to work with Trump if he is ready to make meaningful changes to help raise worker wages and protect the environment. “It depends on what he’s willing to do,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell <https://cd.politicopro.com/member/152934> (D-Mich.) “But I’m investing the time to understand where the consensus is.”

Labor, environment and other civil society groups also said they aren’t publicly writing off any chance of reaching a satisfactory NAFTA deal despite Trump’s aversion to climate-change policies and his embrace of pro-Wall Street regulatory reforms.

“We enter every negotiation in a good faith state of mind and we expect a lot from our government,” said Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO. “Certainly candidate Trump made a lot of promises about fixing flawed trade agreements and looking out for American workers and good jobs, so we will hold him and his administration to that promise.”

In fact, the Trump administration may decide it needs to work with Democrats to achieve one of its key goals — reducing the trade deficit.

That will require actions like strengthening labor and environment rules, eliminating the controversial investor protections, eliminating a ban on Buy America procurement requirements, introducing currency rules and strengthening rules of origin, said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

“This is an agenda that is as appealing to the Republicans in Congress as eating ground glass,” Wallach said. “The administration is going to have to figure out the politics of whether they actually want an agreement that satisfies what they pledged to American voters and that can get through Congress. If so, they’re going to be stuck ... having to do a lot of things that Democrats in Congress have been calling for for decades.”

Adam Behsudi contributed to this report.

 

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